Sunday, February 25, 2007

Hand-To-Hand Aran

I taught myself a lot of what I know about knitting from EZ's Knitting Without Tears many years ago. Right now I'm working on her Hand-to-Hand Aran sweater out of Knitting Workshop. I was interested in making this sweater because of the short rows that she suggests putting in after you pick up the stitches for the body. I'm following the spirit of her directions, but I've made some changes. My sleeves are a bit narrower than the ones she suggests, so that means that I had less stitches to play with for patterning the yoke. Also, I've picked different cable patterns to use. The big cable is this one, and the smaller one is one repeat of honeycomb. Here's what I have so far:

I'm knitting with this coned yarn from WEBS in color Arctic Fox. This yarn is still in spinning oil, so the stitches are much harsher than they will be once I've washed the oil out. When I made my swatch the yarn puffed up really nicely. I've just finished the neck opening (the slit you see on the right side of the picture), and I can't wait to get through the next 30 rows so that I can pick up stitches for the body and see how those short rows work! But I have very little knitting time, so it could be a while.